EIC Speaker Spotlight: Vadim Lander

I think in the identity management space today, we are seeing a number of challenges. Identity is often called the, the last perimeter or sometimes the only perimeter and now identity has become a, a highly critical component of the enterprise architecture. And as enterprises continue to figure out how they need to grow, how they need to compete, how they need to sort of, you know, pick up the, the right kind of it infrastructure.

They're also looking at how to modernize their investment in identity and access management, how to modernize the IM architecture itself, to be able to, you know, implement the kinds of experiences their businesses need to deliver to, to their customers. So that is creating what I would say, a revolution for identity and management requiring IM to be sort of revolutionized modernized and, and, and then rethought in terms of how does it, how does it behave? Where is it how it's supposed to integrate, and then how is it helping organizations to create great customer experiences? Great question.

I think identity, for the most part, typically look at it from three, three perspectives. You know, one perspective is how does it help business sort of create the right user experiences?

You know, we, as consumers, as employees, as, as business partners always want to see 360 of the enterprise of the organization, and then the organization needs to see 360 of us, of our identities. And sometimes we call that omnichannel. So one dimension that identity has to voltage is in terms of being able to provide this capabilities across different channels while maintaining security, while maintaining, you know, great user experience while maintaining the, the right level of privileges, right.

To ensure that, you know, identities get what they need and then enterprises, you know, you know, handle the security the right way. The second point is about being able to bridge the, the, the question of entitlements, right? We've always as an industry, we've always struggled with what is an entitlement and how do you properly align the use of the entitlement with the management of entitlement? And so this is the, the I in the IM is identity.

And the a in the, in the IM is access and being able to fuse the identity aspect of who can do what, and then the a, and then the access aspect of what are they supposed to be able to do, right? Is, is really the question. And we are seeing now steps in the IM architecture to be able Touse these into fewer data models, you know, simpler, simpler data models, and easier to administer and easier to manage this kind of relationship. And third is, I would say, it's the, the architecture itself, how do we practice identity management?

How, how do we run identity management? You know, where does it run? So being able to create an environment where identity management itself, as an it architecture can take advantage of modern compute infrastructure of modern, you know, cloud or hybrid cloud environments, and being able to connect the dots across the sort of extended it fabric of the organization. So the IM itself, as an architecture now undergoing changes to be able to take advantage of the latest advances in the compute fabrics.

I think it's the, you know, starts with the understanding of, you know, what are the, what are the goals, right? What is the, what are the, you know, what are the business drivers here, right? Are we looking at expanding or making the user experience great across, you know, omnichannel? So we need to, we need to help with the modern way to authenticate identities, right? The password list has to come into the picture, but not just the password, but also the right, the right level of, you know, risk management, right.

You know, every IM decision now has to be done with some, some form of risk, you know, being measured and acted upon. And this is exactly for example, where zero trust, you know, principles and zero trust computing comes into the picture. So you have to understand exactly where are the business needs, right? How do we help Users have much better user experience?

Where do we need to invest to create a more secure and while making it more agile, you know, environment, and, and how do we, how we are able to delegate the, the, these capabilities to the line of business, right, to the application teams that have to be able to ramp up their application environments, you know, get the new business, you know, out business apps out the door. So the, the, the bus, the line of business teams, the application teams, the IM program teams and the it infrastructure have to work together to make this, you know, to make this a reality.

Now, I, I think so. I think what we, what we say when we, what we mean when we say identity fabrics is we mean availability of capabilities.

You know, we mean, you know, on demand, availability of identity, dial tone, which doesn't necessarily mean identity as a service, right? In terms of SAS infrastructure, but what it does mean in terms, it means being able to incorporate identity and security capabilities into the fabric of your applications, no matter where those applications may be now that we don't have a perimeter anymore, right. Identity is the perimeter.

And we need to make sure that the decisions we make regarding identity regarding who you are, what you're able to do, where, you know, what are your privileges, those decisions can be incorporated into the fabric of your applications. And that requires use of standards that requires use of APIs. I would say, now the identity has to be a hundred percent API driven, so they can be incorporated into the fabric review environment.

And that's really where the notion of fabric comes into the picture, meaning that you can sort of put together these, these scenarios and then, and then have the right level of identity insecurity brought into the fabric of your apps. Yes. So I'll just mention a couple things, you know, one is, I'll be talking about identity next management in terms of how he's being modernized.

So how, how do I think it needs to be modernized? What are we as an organization doing to help our customers modernize their identity, next management infrastructure, right? How does this relate to zero trust principles? Because zero trust, you know, being able to incorporate risk into everything we do and make making sure that the identity management itself can be seen as an omnichannel continuous fabric of identity, you know, capabilities, really part of this, of this new architecture that IM needs to needs to deliver on. We are working on that.

You know, we are working on helping our customers modernize the environments. And I do believe that the, the fabrics concept and the, the notion of identity services really becomes key in this, in this modern world.